Day 1 Conclusion: The Pentax K-5 is a compact, robust, and capable camera. It’s uniquely small compared to direct competition from Canon and Nikon, offers a wide range of similarly compact and able lenses including the55mm f/1.4 DA* tested here. The camera offers a few innovative features in control and customization and will appeal to photographers desiring a compact, pentaprism (optical viewfinder) DSLR.

Day 2 Conclusion: To my eye, RAW files emerge from the camera as more neutral and perhaps a bit flat compared to other 35mm digital cameras. They’re like blank canvases, ready for processing (to which they respond very nicely). In this respect, the RAW files remind me of those from modern Hasselblad cameras: clean and neutral, ready for processing. By contrast, the Nikon RAW files I use regularly have an already-boosted look, with contrast and saturation amped from the beginning. Files can be easily made to look the same from either starting place, but it’s interesting to admire Pentax’s bias towards especially clean and true-looking RAW files.

Day 3 Conclusion: I really enjoyed adding the K-5to my usual kit for a wedding. It is quick and responsive, stealthy, and delivers big, beautiful images (especially for a cropped-sensor camera). It is unbeatable for customization and a joy to operate. In my testing, I discovered two curious issues, an especially slow response time when displaying images for review and strong purple fringing in certain back-lit situations. A problematic SD card may be responsible for the playback delay (more on that in a future post). My purple fringing issue may be isolated to our test camera, but it is certainly cause for alarm. Please comment below if you have experienced a similar issue or have a K-5that does not have this problem.

Day 4 Conclusion: The Pentax K-5 continues to be a fun little camera to shoot. I’ve enjoyed using it as both a landscape and portrait camera. It is uniquely customizable, offering many options for controls and file output. On a portrait shoot – even in the rain – it provides easy operation, smooth autofocus and metering and will bring home attractive images with good color, detail, and contrast. I continue to be impressed with it’s compact size and comfortable ergonomics.

Day 5 Conclusion: To sum up the night shoot experience, the Pentax K-5 is a creatively inspiring and fun to use camera. It is very well built, easy to customize, compact, and captures clean, nicely-detailed files with minimal noise. I like that it mixes professional versatility and functionality with features that make it fun to experiment with. Pentax needs to address the K-5’s purple fringing issue, though in the meantime, Adobe Lightroom offers an easy remedy for most images with unsightly fringing. The camera also seems to take longer-than-normal to process previews. Complaints aside, the image quality of the K-5 is top tier for a 35mm crop-sensor DSLR and it offers an especially wide dynamic range. I would be quick to recommend it to a photographer seeking a compact and capable DSLR.

For those serious about video work, the K-5 will be a bit of a tease without a dedicated microphone and some sort of after-market stabilization frame. For photographers who might enjoy the occasional motion grab, it’s a fun tool to have added to an already very capable little camera.

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